Earlier it had been explained to Kane that Adeline lingered in the stadium to deal with “cleanup,” which meant making sure no one ever knew the reverie happened. “The trick is to erase everything, but not fill in every gap,” she said. “If you leave just enough unknown, the mind lies to itself and fills it in organically. It’s easy.”

Adeline can manipulate memories, Kane thought. He went cold, connecting her gruesome power to his own messed-up mind.

“Adeline is the security,” Elliot said. “I’m the strategy. We each can fight, but Urs is the true soldier. She channels force, taking it in through her barriers and turning into pure strength. She’s our offense and defense. She’s a beast.”

Ursula smirked. “Thanks, Elliot.”

Kane grew colder still. Security, Strategy, Soldier. He directed his icy gaze at Ursula.

“So what’s my S word?”

The three of them froze while Kane waited, each second lasting a lifetime, for an explanation that wouldn’t come. Exasperated, he just decided to be frank.

“I overheard the entire conversation in the boiler room. I know I used to be part of this group. The Others, right? That’s what you call yourselves?”

Ursula shifted. “Yeah, we needed a name to refer to each other by in any reverie, no matter the plot. It’s a code name.”

“A code name? Whose corny idea was a code name?”

“Yours.” Adeline’s hand struck the table, silencing Kane and the tables nearby. “Your idea. You. Our leader.”

Kane went red-hot, his hairline prickling and his clothes itching on his back.

Leader?

“Same with the term Reverie. And Hero. You said it’s hard to handle a problem if you don’t know how to talk about it, so you made up terms.”

White heat burst at the edges of Kane’s vision. Sweat dotted his lower back. How could they not feel the heat?

“You were the first to explore the reveries. The first to get powers,” Elliot said. “You, then Urs. Eventually Adeline and I got dragged into a few reveries, by accident, and when our powers developed it seemed like a natural thing to form a team. So we became the Others. We’re the only ones who stay lucid, and if we don’t unravel them properly, they leave damage behind. People get hurt. We learned that the hard way.”

It was a subtle movement, but Adeline’s eyes closed a fraction longer than a blink.

Elliot continued. “And recently, the reveries have been getting worse. More…elaborate. Like whole entire worlds instead of just one story. And then around two months ago, we thought—” He swallowed. “You began talking about the energy of reveries. The stuff that creates them. You said there was a source of power that the heroes were tapping into, somehow, and if you could find it you could control it, too.”

Adeline picked up. “We told you not to.”

“Not to what?”